Dying in Varanasi is, for many Hindus, better than living almost anywhere else, and the city's ghats are built around that belief.
The two cremation ghats
Manikarnika Ghat and Harishchandra Ghat are the city's dedicated cremation grounds, where bodies are burned in the open on wood pyres beside the Ganges. Tradition holds a fire has burned continuously at Manikarnika for a very long span, tended without interruption, and mythology ties the site to Shiva. Dying and being cremated at Varanasi is believed to grant moksha, release from the cycle of rebirth, directly, independent of accumulated karma, a promise that draws elderly and terminally ill pilgrims to the city specifically to end their lives there.
An evening ceremony for the living
Downstream from the cremation ghats, Dashashwamedh Ghat hosts a nightly Ganga aarti, a choreographed fire ceremony performed by priests with multi-tiered oil lamps, drawing large crowds of pilgrims and tourists in a single striking display distinct from, and much newer as organised spectacle than, the private business of cremation nearby.
One city, two economies of the sacred
Varanasi runs the ordinary business of dying, cremating and mourning in full public view on the same riverbank where an entirely separate industry of pilgrimage tourism performs a nightly ceremony for onlookers, and the two run within a few hundred metres of each other without much pretence that they are the same activity.